The score will be 1-all in Serena Williams’ growing household: The tennis pro is expecting another baby girl.
Williams and her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, shared the news Monday via YouTube where they posted a recap of their hybrid baby shower and gender reveal party. The couple learned the sex of their “Jelly Bean” with a nighttime drone display coordinated by Ohanian.
The Grand Slam champion, 41, took followers behind the scenes at the outdoor summer party, which included a dunk tank, food truck, picnic blankets, a choreographed dance and music by DJ Mike Wise. Before the reveal, Williams, who was firmly “Team Pink,” said that she felt nervous because she didn’t have “any contingency plan” if the baby was a boy.
Ohanian, 40, further contributed to those nerves by pranking his wife into thinking that he put together a “basic” reveal: He opted to have Williams cut into a yellow cake rather than one that revealed a pink or blue hue on the inside.
“I’m doing this because I want to troll her and [our daughter] Olympia into thinking that this is the reveal of Jelly Bean,” he told the cameraperson. “She will cut into this cake and probably be disappointed and hopefully appreciate my troll. But, we’ll see. I don’t know if she’s gonna be a professional about it. She might see this cake come out, roll her eyes, and say, ‘This guy had one job and he gave me a … cake gender reveal.’ But we’ll see. There’s a reveal after the reveal.”
Indeed, Williams cut into the cake, saw that it was yellow and attempted to shove it in her husband’s face. Thankfully, Ohanian had a contingency plan of his own.
“We are actually going to reveal Jelly Bean’s sex. The way we’re going to do it, though, is with a little style and some spectacular lights,” he told the gathered crowd. When the lights spelled out “It’s a girl,” the couple celebrated with a kiss.
The Compton-raised superstar announced her second pregnancy in May, confirming the news by debuting her growing belly at the Met Gala.
Williams and Ohanian welcomed Olympia in September 2017, two months prior to their nuptials in New Orleans. The athlete — who was two months pregnant when she won the Australian Open in 2017 — later shared that she gave birth to her daughter by emergency C-section and survived multiple postpartum complications and surgeries after Olympia arrived. The revelations underscored the high maternal mortality rate among Black women in the United States.
Williams also revealed her second pregnancy shortly after announcing her “evolution” away from tennis and writing an essay for Vogue that explained her 2022 decision to focus on expanding her family.
